It’s now time for the first day of Eurogamer, we started off early and arrived at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre before 9am, and met a huge line of early starters, possibly wanting to get their Call of Duty Ghost Prestige Editions.

We got in as an exhibitor, meaning we were able to get access to the full and un-crowded venue for photos such as these:

This is one of the benefits of early access that made me enjoy this event, seeing the size and scope of stuff made specifically for gamers, it’s awesome to see and an amazing experience to be in without the 70,000 attendees crowded with you.

So in the hour before the early access attendees were in, all of us were preparing for demoing Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices, as well as getting a few of us Zombified (I was originally supposed to be a zombie on the first day, but time constraints meant most of us had to go out without the makeup, so you’ll see me zombified on day two).

So one of the main activities I did on Thursday was roaming around the expo, showing off the ASUS Vivo RT Tablet with the games Dredd vs Zombies and Zombie HQ installed on them, as well as getting people to fill out a survey on developing for Windows (and registering for a prize draw of Steam games from Rebellion). The first part went over really well, particularly with attendees already waiting to in line for games or demos on the show floor, or are sitting down waiting for time to pass. The attendees really enjoyed Dredd vs Zombies, and some either had Windows 8 or were planning on getting Windows 8, so hopefully they’ll download those games from the Windows Store, not to mention I was able to get a few people to play my Windows Store game, BOOM: Fireworks Defence Unit!

The survey however, was much harder, at least for me. Eurogamer attendees mostly consisted of gamers, and not game developers/students, and the survey was oriented to games and app development. While some other ambassadors did really well, (Ilya said he was able to get 15 surveys done in one go from people waiting to try the Occulus Rift), I struggled to get the few entries I did. Most people I asked either didn’t develop games, or didn’t want to do the survey because they weren’t interested in developing for Windows 8. Either way I was able to get a few interested people to try out the Windows 8 stuff.

Since it’s Eurogamer, I took out some time to check out the other games. Since I grew up on Nintendo, and I love Indie Games, I checked out both the Nintendo booth and the Indie Games (plus the Indie Game Arcade Room). While I enjoyed most of the Nintendo games on offer (such as the Retro City Rampage 3DS port, the new Shantae game and Super Mario 3D World), the game Wonderful 101 was broken, as I saw one of the Nintendo staff found the game glitched out on them, and when I played I got to the point where I couldn’t progress and couldn’t find any enemies to fight.

In the indie games section, I tried out Android Assault Cactus, CHROMA, I Get This Call Every Day, Three Monkeys, FIST OF AWESOME, Volume, Velocity 2X, all of which were either really neat, really fun or had really cool mechanics. Two indie game exhibits that deserve extra mention are Xenolith and Achtung Arcade.

Xenolith is a shoot ’em up where the shape of your ship determines what enemies can destroy you or be destroyed. The levels are really fast paced, and it requires a very quick reaction time which is definitely the kind of game I enjoy, but the most eye catching thing about this is the environmental effects. Everytime I looked at it, I couldn’t help but look in awe at the floor breaking up and caving in underneath your ship. Check out the developers Snowbolt Interactive and get this game Greenlit!

Achtung Arcade is an arcade cabinet containing a collection of games from Indie Game Developer and Ludum Dare regular Sos Sosowski. I met the guy on this day and he has a really good sense of humour, and he definitely is a master at marketing his own games. The guy is most well known for the game McPixel, which is available on Steam, and if you played that game, you’d have the same amount of hilarity and cleverness on all the games in this kit.